


Exposed

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Preserved [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Recovery, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Team as Family (The First Avenger edition)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 19:51:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3782263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The people in Steve Rogers's life before and after his time as the 1950s Winter Soldier. </p><p>Two POV shifts on <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2705282"><i>Preserved</i></a>: (1) Molly meeting Bucky and Steve and (2) Chester Phillips isn't sure what to make of it when Steve Rogers appears on his doorstep ten years after he died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Molly Raney met Bucky Barnes after work on Seventh Avenue near Thirty-Sixth street, a collision not nearly as romantic as the ones in the movies. Her purse emptied out when they crashed into each other, her hand-mirror shattering on impact with the sidewalk, and her lipstick of course fell open and was promptly covered first in dirt and then by the glass shards and contents of Bucky's bottle of soda, which he'd dropped when he'd run into her.

Bucky muttered apologies and a few curses and a quick Irish prayer against bad luck because of the mirror, not in that order, and offered to pay her for the destroyed items. "We'll work it out over coffee?" he suggested hopefully, tilting his head at the Chock Full o'Nuts across the street.

He was handsome and had a nice smile and she wouldn't have minded a little something to replace the mirror with, so she said yes. And somehow coffee became an agreement to go to dinner on Saturday night. Which in turn became another agreement to go out on the following Saturday, to be followed by a breakfast date in the middle of the week because Bucky was on nights then.

By then, Molly knew a few things about Bucky beyond that he worked for the railroad and his first name was really James. (She didn't mind the 'Bucky'; back home, there'd been Fat John and Slow John and Baker John and Seasick John, so using a middle name to distinguish between the Jameses was something of an uptick in style.) Starting with why he was available to be knocking into girls in Midtown and not overseas with every other young man. "I was," he'd assured her, unbothered by the question, or so she'd thought at the time. "I was there a year and change. Got into some trouble, got out of it, they gave me a medal and sent me home."

It would be months before she could appreciate just how much he'd left out of that statement and years before she found out the entire story, but by that point, she knew him too well to call him on it. She'd known he had a best friend Steve with whom he'd had some kind of falling out, that Steve was still a soldier and one very near to the fighting at that, and that Bucky was both furious at him and fearful for him. It wasn't until Bucky's sister Helen drew her aside and explained who, exactly, Steve was that Molly stopped trying to assure him that Steve, wherever he was, was probably not in the constant danger Bucky imagined him to be.

She met Steve himself after she and Bucky'd been courting for almost a year, enough time to start anticipating a proposal and know that she'd accept it when it came. Steve was everything Captain America was in the newsreels, handsome and strong and gallant and, at Howard Stark's fancy gala, quick to shake hands and slap backs and smile for his audience. But he was also weary, Molly saw, tired from more than just the flight across the Atlantic, and even more eager to leave than Bucky was.

In the diner the three of them wound up at, that was where she really met Steve. Off the stage and off-duty at last, she saw the man he'd become and, perhaps, the man he'd been before his transformation. He was quiet and wry and so very desperate for Bucky's forgiveness, which in turn Bucky could not grant even as he gave Steve the rest of himself without hesitation. She also got to see a little bit of who Bucky had been before the war had quieted him, too. She wasn't a chatterbox, but she could cobble together a conversation among reluctant (stubborn, desperate) partners and so she did. She told Steve about what Bucky had been up to, since his asking would only remind them both of why Bucky was home in the first place, and she asked Steve about living in London and seeing Paris after the liberation and whether he had a lady love. (He did and he blushed sweetly when talking of Peggy Carter and what he wanted to bring back from America for her.) It was never not strained, but by the time they parted ways in the early hours so that Bucky could escort her up to Kingsbridge, she thought she'd done well enough. The boys hugged farewell and exchanged old jokes that seemed more wistful than funny.

Two months later, Steve was dead. Or 'missing,' but there was little hope and less doubt and Molly watched Bucky fall apart with grief and guilt and then try to pull himself back together. He clung to her and she held on to him, but she could not mend the wound Steve's death had left on his heart. By the time Steve was formally declared dead and a state funeral held in '48, she stood among the grieving Barnes family as one of them, a wife and mother and she knew how much that meant to Bucky. But she also knew that this wound would never heal, however much happiness filled the rest of his days.

Which was why when Peggy Carter showed up on their doorstep four years later, Molly could only fear the worst. And even then, she could never have imagined how bad that worst could be.


	2. Chapter 2

Chester would tell anyone and everyone that he was enjoying his retirement just fine, that the bull shit he saw on a cattle ranch was a lot easier to deal with and stunk a lot less than what he'd seen in the service. It was a good joke, always got a laugh, and it had the bonus of being true.

Which was not to say that he was fine with what had happened, just that he could live with the aftermath. 

He hated having been forced out in disgrace, the ignominious end to an honorable career, the convenient scapegoat for a true goatfuck of a situation. He understood why it had happened, both in the way that he'd been the low man on the totem pole and that someone had to pay for Izzy Fucking Goldman's treason and that someone was going to be the commanding officer who was still alive, since Steve Rogers had already paid the ultimate price. Chester accepted his share of the responsibility; he'd known Goldman was a socialist with Soviet sympathies and done nothing about it. But it had been conveniently been forgotten by those above him that the SSR had been an international enterprise accepting folks from all of the Allies and the Soviets, like it or not, had been their allies at the time. 

He'd known what Goldman thought about the Soviets, capitalism, and the rest because Goldman had made sure everyone had known. Goldman had played the line between rabble-rouser and dutiful NCO like a maestro, serving as Rogers's enabler and wrangler and procurer and backstop all while trying to foment a revolution among the junior enlisted and civilians. Chester could have gotten rid of Goldman had he really wanted to, but he hadn't. Goldman was a commie, but he'd also been a damned fine team sergeant and he'd been one of the only people who could control Rogers -- and Carter couldn't pretend to be infantry. Chester had let Rogers keep Goldman for much the same reason he'd let Rogers keep Jones, Morita, Dernier (who had also been a commie, if anyone had actually paid attention), Falsworth (who shouldn't have been allowed to enlist in the first place), and Dum Dum Dugan, scourge of the Fifth Army. The answer was the same for them all: because Rogers had been a god damned pain in the ass... and an uncanny assessor of human beings. They'd been a special thing, the Commandos, and Chester had fought to keep them safe from poachers and interlopers. In return, they had repaid him -- and the Allies -- many times over with success after success. But Goldman's defection had tarnished it all. With hindsight being clearer than history, Chester had been called on the carpet to explain why he'd let a USO showgirl go AWOL and then team up with a commie kike, a nigger, a Nip, a Frog, and two more who were deviant in other ways. 

There'd been no answer to that, none that would outweigh Goldman's treachery. 

Which was why, after almost forty years away, Chester was back on the ranch outside Amarillo where he'd grown up, getting up before dawn to milk cows and shovel hay. Agnes loved it, loved having a home that was hers and not wherever they could make comfortable until the next time the Army saw fit to fling them across the country. There were neighbors -- not too close, but Texas close -- and a short drive into town to pick up whatever they needed. It hadn't taken them long to settle in to house and town, a couple of years to get the herd built up so that they were doing more than just eating up his pension in feed, and Agnes was already the established queen of the church potlucks. The girls had visited with their families so that the grandkids could run around and play with the animals, and when he didn't think about how desperately lonely he sometimes felt cut off from the Army that had been his home since he'd been twenty-two, it was a good life. It was what he'd always wanted for himself and Agnes, just a few years and a retirement ceremony short of when he'd wanted to get it. 

Tonight, the evening was fine, not too hot and not too windy, and he'd already cleaned up -- Agnes expected him to be presentable for supper -- and was reading the paper when he heard the knock on the screen door. There weren't many people who'd knock 'round these parts without calling out as well and he was curious enough about the silence to get up to see who it was despite hearing Agnes make her way from the kitchen. 

Standing at the front door was a ghost. 

Agnes recognized him, of course, but she was too frozen in shock to move and so Steve Rogers stood there on the other side of the screen door looking like he wasn't sure whether to run or fall down. He was thinner than Chester ever remembered seeing him and worn raw, more haggard than he'd ever been in uniform even after the roughest mission. He looked exhausted and near tears and like he wasn't sure how he'd wound up on a front porch outside Amarillo ten years after he'd died. 

"Where've you been, son?" Chester asked gently, one hand on Agnes's shoulder to support her -- and support himself -- as he reached forward with the other to push open the screen door. "Lot of folks've been looking."

Rogers tried to laugh, but it cut off with a sob. "I--" he began, but that's as far as he got out before his voice broke and he rubbed a dirty hand over his face. 

Agnes, who'd seen more than her fair share of overwhelmed young men and women on her doorstep from being married to the Army through two wars, recovered like a champ.

"You can tell us later, Steve," she assured, reaching out slowly to touch his arm. Rogers startled, like he wasn't used to being touched in kindness, but let himself be tugged inside. "You hungry, sweetheart? I'm just finishing up a roast for dinner. You wash up and come eat and I'm sure everything will look much better with something warm in your belly."

Rogers looked like he wanted to argue but was too overwhelmed to do so and Agnes took advantage, leading him down the hall toward the bathroom, and she shot a look over her shoulder that Chester knew how to translate into bewilderment and concern. He hung back as Agnes turned on the water and adjusted it, like she did for the grandkids, talking to Steve the entire time about how she was going to get towels for him and where the soap was and how she'd look around and see what they had that fit him and how Bobby, one of the cowherds, was almost as big as he was and would have a shirt and jeans lying around and maybe they'd do until his own were clean again. Chester didn't need her to tell him that tracking down Bobby's laundry was his job and he left to go do it, listening to Agnes's voice rise and fall in soft peaks, soothing even if you couldn't hear the words. He wondered whether Rogers could. 

By the time he got back from the barn, Agnes was back in the kitchen, sitting down at the table with her hands folded. 

"What's going on, Chess?" 

"Hell if I know," he admitted, sitting heavily in the chair next to her, the clothes in his lap. "Peggy never said a word that she knew he was alive." 

Peggy sometimes told him a lot more than he was authorized to hear these days because she wanted his counsel; her faith in his wisdom was a gift. He would have to contact her, of course. But just picking up the phone wasn't so easy; there could be eavesdroppers and he couldn't just say that Steve Rogers was in his bathtub. He sighed and stood up and handed the clothes over to Agnes. "Let me go see what I can find out." 

He went into his office and found the book with Peggy's and Howard Stark's phone numbers in it and took it into the hallway to the phone. Nobody answered Peggy's phone, so he tried Howard, starting in New York. The butler answered, Mister Stark wasn't expected home until quite late, but if Colonel Phillips would like to leave a message, the butler would see that it was received.

"You tell Howard that I found something of his from our war days that he'd probably like back," Chester said. "It's broken down a little, but probably still works."

Agnes made him bring Bobby's clothes to Rogers, using the excuse of opening the door to check on him. Rogers was still sitting in the bath, although he'd had gotten on to the business of cleaning the dust of the road off of him. But the rest, well that wasn't going to wash off in a single bath. Or a thousand. With his wet hair plastered to his head, he looked young, younger than he had during the war, but the set of his shoulders and the bleak look in his eyes aged him to Methuselah. Wherever he'd been for the last decade, it hadn't been anywhere nice. 

"You get out before it gets cold," Chester told him, trying hard to keep up the gruff tone he'd used back when Colonel Phillips had been giving orders to Captain Rogers. They were neither of those men now and Chester thought Rogers -- _Steve_ \-- was a lot further away. But Steve had come to him on those terms and so he'd abide by them until he had any idea of what the real situation was. 

Steve, dressed acceptably enough in Bobby's spares, appeared hesitantly in the kitchen doorway fifteen minutes later and Agnes chivvied him over to a seat and started putting food on his plate, asking-but-not-really-asking if he wanted potatoes and string beans and carrots, buttering him a still-hot roll, and telling him there was cold beer and lemonade. Chester knew better than to tell her that Steve's metabolism meant that he ate more during the day and not all at once, but the man looked skinnier than he ever remembered him being, so he kept quiet and sliced the roast. Steve ate a lot, hesitantly at first and then like a man who hadn't had a good meal in a long time. Chester could only hope that it hadn't been since the war. 

There wasn't much to talk about, not with Steve still so clearly on the edge of breaking down again, so Agnes told him about the ranch, about the cows and the barn cat that liked to sleep on top of the door and scare the dickens out of whoever came in first to do the milking, silly things that didn't require much of any answer. "You have a place to go?" she asked him as he finally put his fork and knife down. 

"No, ma'am," Steve replied. 

"Then you'll stay here," Agnes replied firmly. "Now how about some pie?" 

They put him in the back spare bedroom to sleep, Agnes leaving a bible and a glass of water on the bedside and assuring him that he wouldn't disturb anyone. Chester went into the front room to pretend to read his abandoned paper, joined eventually by Agnes, who was able to knit and listen to the radio and look at him expectantly all at once. 

"I'm not gonna spitball until I hear from Howard or Peggy," he told her. "Maybe he'll be up to talking in the morning." 

The phone rang at almost midnight and Chester knew who it was before he climbed out of bed to pick up the extension in the upstairs hallway. 

"Got your message," Howard said, sounding that wide-awake drunk that Chester had gotten used to over the years. 

"It was Abe's," Chester said. "But you pretended it was yours." 

Howard laughed, a little edge to it. "Peggy never let me believe it," he said and Chester knew that Howard knew exactly what -- who -- they were talking about. 

"You even know it was missing?" Chester asked. 

A deep sigh. "Yeah," Howard admitted. "Realized it a couple of years ago."

There was a story here, a long one, and Chester knew better than to ask. But he wanted to. He wasn't offended that he didn't know -- he was a civilian now and while Peggy might seek him out for advice every once in a while, there were going to be plenty of secrets that had to be kept. Even ones that affected him. 

"Mind if I come out to give it a once-over, see if it can be fixed?" Howard asked. "Bring Peggy, maybe? She hasn't been out to see you in a while, I know."

Chester agreed and Howard said they'd see him on Saturday and it was all very casual. 

The back bedroom was downstairs and at the other end of the house, but they could still hear Steve screaming in the middle of the night. Agnes reached out for his hand and Chester held it, knowing that they had to leave him be. 

The following morning, Steve wasn't much better than he'd been the night before. He ate what was put in front of him and Agnes made sure it was plenty. Chester waited until he'd finally been stuffed to bursting before telling him that Howard and Peggy were coming in to visit. The news distressed him and Chester wasn't sure he wasn't going to bolt the table or maybe even the house. 

"You running from them?" Chester asked. It hadn't crossed his mind last night that that could be the case. Steve and Peggy had been sneaking off together for most of the war and Steve had been one of the few people who Howard couldn't annoy to the point of reprisal. They'd been his friends and, judging from what Howard hadn't said last night, they'd been looking for him. Howard hadn't called him on a drunken whim last night; if he'd thought Chester had been talking about a doo-dad, he'd have called this morning and suggested Chester send it up to New York via parcel post. 

Steve looked at his hands for a good minute before answering. "I'm running from everyone."

"We can tell them not to come," Agnes offered, putting a hand on his shoulder. As he had last night, Steve jumped at the contact and then visibly forced himself to relax. 

Steve shook his head. "It's time."

The rest of the week was very strange with Steve hovering like a shadow as the usual business of the ranch got done. The hands were told that Steve had been one of Chester's soldiers from the war, which meant nothing to them because none of them knew he'd been Captain America's CO. They just saw a young man having a hard time of it and treated him like a skittish colt, offering him nothing but kindness and the chance to do some work if he wanted to. So Steve hauled hay bales, being careful not to look like he could carry one in each hand, and nobody said a word when he hid every time he heard a car bumping along the driveway. Agnes went into Amarillo to buy him some clothes and he protested, saying he had no money, but Agnes told him it didn't matter and when that wasn't acceptable to him that Howard could pay for it. Chester gave him opportunities to talk if he wanted, and he did want, that much Chester could see. But whatever he had to say was still too much for him and Chester accepted that it would all come out when Howard and Peggy were here. 

Saturday came and Steve hid himself when Howard's fancy rental came up the driveway, not coming right out again even after he must have heard Howard's and Peggy's voices. They got through the usual pleasantries despite the anticipation and Agnes led Peggy and Howard inside while Chester went to the shed where Steve had run off to on his silent cat feet. Chester had noticed, of course he'd noticed, all the ways Steve moved differently now. There was an efficiency of movement that hadn't been there ten years ago when the entire SSR headquarters staff had kept a chalkboard tally of what Captain America had stepped on, knocked over, or otherwise accidentally destroyed. Howard had ended up teaching them all the useful word "klutz," but that didn't apply to Steve now. Even when he startled, and he startled often, he did it gracefully. 

"You want, we can get to the truck and be at the best bar in Amarillo in twenty minutes," Chester told Steve as he rounded the corner behind the shed. Steve was standing there, eyes closed against the sun, with his head leaning against the back wall. 

"I can't get drunk," Steve said, opening his eyes. 

"I know that," Chester agreed. "But I can, so you can match me beer for beer and then drive us home."

It got a weak smile, which was about all he'd hoped for. Unless Steve really did want to go to Pete's. 

"I don't know what you've been up to while you were gone," Chester went on when Steve didn't move. "But I get the feeling that Howard and Peggy do and they're not here to call you to task for it. Peggy's damned near frantic to see you and I don't think I've seen her like that since you hared off looking for Barnes in '43." 

Steve laughed, but it might've been a sob instead. 

"Is it so bad?" Chester asked, aware that the answer was going to be yes. Whether it was objectively bad to anyone else, well, that might be up to Peggy and Howard to say. 

"It's worse," Steve answered and yeah, it had been a sob because his voice hitched even now. He stared at his hands and, all of a sudden, Chester _knew_. Shakespeare had more to say about humanity than most folks gave him credit for. 

"Whoever you killed, son, they're not here to take you in for it," Chester said and Steve looked up, surprised. Chester made a sour face at him in return. "Agnes probably figured it out days ago. Now let's go in before they come looking." 

He turned and started walking, reasonably sure Steve would follow behind. He did, over to the house and up the stairs, pausing only right outside the front room where Agnes was serving out lemonade. 

Chester came in first, so he had a clear view of Peggy as Steve appeared. He'd been the one to have to tell her that Schmidt's plane had exploded with Steve aboard and he would remember watching her collapse into herself with grief until the end of his days. This was almost the reverse, a blossoming of relief and everything she'd tried to lock away a decade ago. She put down her glass without looking, forcing Howard to rescue it before it fell over, and stood up and was across the room in three strides and in Steve's arms in one more. Chester had seen a lot of reunions, had been through plenty of his own, but very few of them had involved someone mourned as dead and then turning out not to be. They held on to each other like they were drowning and Chester looked away to avoid the intensity, looking instead over at Agnes, who was dabbing away happy tears. 

"Still works well enough," Howard said with false lightness to cover up how affected he was, too. "But the voice-box may need repairs."

It didn't, although Steve barely spoke during lunch. He made up for it afterward, however. Fortified by chiffon cake and more lemonade, Steve started talking and couldn't seem to stop. He told a tale too terrible to be real and yet clearly was, but he seemed almost uninterested in his own suffering, focusing on the damage he'd done to his country and the lives he'd taken. It wasn't until the end of the tale that the dispassionate reportage gave way; they'd gotten through the meat of the horror and had struck to the bone. 

"Barnes is fine," Howard cut him off. "He's alive and well, back to work and being fruitful and multiplying. Molly gave birth to number four last month."

Steve almost smiled, the closest he'd come all day, but then it faded. 

"We're all in one piece," Peggy said gently, leaning forward. Steve hadn't sat next to her on the couch, had instead chosen a seat not near the others. He wasn't avoiding Peggy, but it was damned close to it. "The only lasting marks are from worrying where you were."

They'd thought he'd killed himself, she didn't say. Didn't have to. The Steve they'd known had been reckless with his own life at times, but he'd never been self-destructive. But this Steve had already been destroyed and Chester understood why Peggy and Howard had been fearful. Without his horrible story bottled up inside of him, he seemed empty, deflated like a balloon a week after the party. Abe's serum had done the impossible and given its recipient a vitality that neither time nor trauma could dim. It had seemed a gift at the time, a marvelous gift that Chester could still remember being stunned by. But right now, it seemed a curse. Steve was going to live forever with what he'd done and he couldn't. 

They'd left it open whether Howard or Peggy would stay the night; there was space in the house and Howard had flown them down and could fly them back whenever he wanted. Peggy wanted to stay, didn't want to let Steve out of her sight, but they both left in the late afternoon with a hamper packed by Agnes because Steve was not getting any less uncomfortable with their presence. He had grown more restless as the afternoon had gone on, as if his story had been the only thing tethering him to the room. Peggy was heartbroken watching him and Howard, too, was distressed, but there wasn't anything to be done for it. Steve endured hugs from them both before fleeing toward the back pasture before the car was even packed. 

"This is the worst of it," Agnes told Peggy, holding her hands to keep her attention. "Now he can heal." 

"Can he?" Peggy asked and it broke Chester's heart to hear that tone in her voice. Peggy hadn't been like a daughter to him during the war, except for the part where, like his own girls, she flaunted her independence and drove him to distraction worrying she was going to get herself killed. But she was something closer to it now and he recognized the particular helplessness in himself from back during the days when Gladys and Edna were younger, crying over broken hearts or whatever else it had been that he couldn't fix. 

"We'll find out," Agnes told her, which wasn't a promise. But it was the truth. Steve had been waiting to know about Barnes (and someday, Chester was going to ask Peggy what the hell she'd been thinking when she came up with that plan) and everyone else he'd left behind and then haunted. He'd been frozen in time by his guilt and now they'd see what happened in the thaw. 

Steve hadn't returned by the time the sun was setting, so Chester saddled up Josephine and went looking for him. Steve was at the far end of the back pasture, up by the creek. He didn't dismount, just told Steve that Agnes was putting supper up and turned around and trotted Josie home. 

"We're both getting too old for this shit," he told the horse as she whinnied when she saw the stable. 

Two weeks later, a box arrived from New York. It was full of clothes in Steve's sizes, mostly daily wear for the ranch but a couple of church suits, and some sketchbooks and pencils and paperback novels. Wrapped in tissue paper was a framed photograph of a large family. There was a piece of paper taped to the back with a list of names in a woman's hand that made it obvious that the people in the photo were the extended Barnes clan; the list ended with a single line: "Be well, Steve." It was signed Molly. 

There was also an envelope inside addressed to Chester and he opened it in his office after leaving the box at Steve's door. Inside the envelope was a note from Howard and a check for a lot of money. 

_I know you don't want it,_ the note began. _And I know you would tell me that you don't need it. But I need it. I can't help but feel like I failed him back in '45, that he ended up in their hands because of something I didn't do. That I cost another friend his life because of my arrogance. I don't know if that's true or not, whether it's just more arrogance, but I need to do something now. I just don't know what. And so, as always, when I am confronted with a problem I can't solve, I throw money at it. He's better off with you and Agnes, that much is clear. So please take this not as payment for what you'd do anyway, but instead as me trying to do something for a friend I cannot help any other way._

Steve said nothing about the box when Chester saw him at dinner, but the photo did go up on the bureau and he did wear the clothes alongside what Agnes had gotten for him. Chester never saw him drawing in the notebooks, but it was enough of a start to accept a gift from people he'd probably never expected to forgive him. Maybe he'd accept that forgiveness someday as well.

In the meanwhile, Chester didn't miss that he'd spent the entire war putting Steve into danger only to focus now on keeping him safe from harm. He'd sent a lot of young men into harm's way during his career and many of them had not come home. And if he couldn't apologize to all the ones who hadn't, then he could at least do what he could for this one who had. Even if all that was right now was to sigh loudly at how a man with so many obvious physical gifts could be so very bad a riding a horse. 


End file.
